Benjamin Lincoln

Benjamin Lincoln (24 January 1733-9 May 1810) was the Secretary of War of the United States from 1781 to 1783, preceding Henry Knox. Lincoln served as a Major-General of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and he accepted the surrender of Charles Cornwallis at the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 as George Washington's second-in-command.

Biography
Benjamin Lincoln was born on 24 January 1733 in Hingham, Massachusetts to a very wealthy family, and he rose to Major of the colonial militia in 1763. He became a town selectman of Hingham in 1765, and he opposed taxes that were levied on the Thirteen Colonies by Parliament. In 1772, Lincoln was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel of the Suffolk County Militia, and he joined the provincial assembly. Lincoln rose to the rank of Major-General in January 1776 after taking part in the siege of Boston, and he barely escaped the British Army's ambush at the Battle of Bound Brook on 13 April 1777. Lincoln was wounded at the Battle of Bemis Heights in 1777 in the same battle as Benedict Arnold, and in August 1778 he rejoined George Washington's army outside of New York City. In September, he was appointed commander of the Southern Department, and he was forced to retreat to Charleston, South Carolina after the failure of the 1779 siege of Savannah. In 1780, he was forced to surrender when Charleston fell to the British, and in November 1780 he was released in a prisoner exchange for William Phillips. On 19 October 1781, Lincoln accepted the surrender of Charles Cornwallis after the Siege of Yorktown, and he would be appointed the first Secretary of War of the United States in 1781. In 1787, Lincoln attended the Constitutional Convention as a delegate from Massachusetts after putting down Shays' Rebellion, and in 1797 he received one electoral vote when he ran for President. Lincoln died in 1810 in his hometown of Hingham at the age of 77.